Season 4 (Mork
Season four of Mork & Mindy began airing on October 8, 1981 on ABC. The fourth and final season concluded after 22 episodes on May 27, 1982. Season Summary Mork and Mindy get married, honeymoon on Ork, and then Mork gets pregnant and spits an egg from his new belly-button which grows and hatches their full-grown son, Mearth. Since Mork had no surname, he and Mearth both adopted Mindy's name, McConnell. Stories revolved around Mork & Mindy's struggles with marriage and parenthood. Fred, Cora, Mr. Bickley and Exidor each made regular appearances throughout the season. Behind the Scenes Remo, Jeannie, Nelson, Lola, Stephanie and Glenda Faye were all dropped, though Glenda Faye made one guest-appearance in "Long Before We Met." Resident director Howard Storm also left the series and was replaced by Bob Claver. "I was getting burned out," Storm recalled.Happier Days: Paramount Classic Television Sitcoms 1974-1984 by Marley Brant After a while my ideas started to run out. I felt like I was starting to imitate myself on the show." The addition of Jonathan Winters as Mearth was meant to spark creativity, but things didn't work out as planned, in part because Williams and Winters frequently devolved into improvisations that were too X-rated for television. "That was chaos!" recalled Pam Dawber.Pioneers of Television: Remembering Robin Williams "Robin could go off, do some brilliant improvisational thing, and come back. Jonathan would go off and you'd never see him again!" Despite the craziness, Dawber recognized that she was in the presence of two comedic geniuses and concocted a plan to have a documentary made about them. "Everybody agreed to do it," she said. "Paramount agreed to do it, we all wrote it off as yes. And wouldn't you know it, Robin's damn management said no. In retrospect, what a wonderful thing that would have been to have. The two of those guys were so nuts, so wonderfully nuts together and so funny." With lagging ratings, the 3-part season finale introduced villainous Kalnik (Joe Regalbuto, "Murphy Brown"), an alien hellbent on destroying Mork, who used a pair of time-travel slippers to transport himself and Mindy into the past, leaving Mearth in the care of Fred. The series concluded with Mork & Mindy in limbo as a setup for season 5, in which Mork & Mindy would have been traveling through time, meeting various historical figures.Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Making of Mork & Mindy Realizing they were going to cancel the show after this cliffhanger was shot, ABC held back one episode with Fred and Cora which aired as the finale instead, in an attempt to give the show some closure. Unfortunately, no one bothered to inform the cast. "I found out the show was canceled by reading it in Variety," Williams commented.People Magazine: Robin Williams, My Life in Pictures "In Hollywood that's like reading your own obituary: 'You're dead, good luck!'" Main characters *Robin Williams as Mork *Pam Dawber as Mindy McConnell *Elizabeth Kerr as Cora Hudson *Conrad Janis as Fred McConnell *Jonathan Winters as Mearth *Robert Donner as Exidor *Ralph James as Orson Season 4 (1981-1982) References Category:Season episode guides